1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a robot having a moving mechanism for causing the robot to freely move.
2. Description of the Related Art
The population of the aged has increased to date and is expected to grow more and more in the future. In such an aging society, how to send out an urgent call for help is a serious problem when an aged person unexpectedly becomes ill when being at home alone for example.
A telephone with a function of sending emergency calls may be used in such a case. However, this type of telephone is not useful when a sick person cannot move at all because he/she needs to reach the place where the telephone is located.
There is a technique for automatically transmitting emergency calls using a mobile robot (refer to Japanese Patent Laid-open No. Hei. 5-300950, for example). In this technique, when plural sensors of the robot detect an abnormality such as a fire, a gas leak, an intruder, etc., the detected abnormality is automatically notified to a fire station, a police office, etc.
There is also a technique for providing voice commands to a robot (refer to Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2001-125585, for example).
In the above conventional techniques however, disorders occurred in a human body are not transmitted. Therefore, it is conceivable to adapt these techniques to a system for detecting and transmitting such disorders, especially sudden illness etc.
However, even if a system improved in this way is provided, it still has a problem of how to precisely detect disorders of a person's body, and may invade privacy of the person if a detection error occurs.